Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

What boots it, thy virtue, What profit thy parts, While one thing thou lackest, The art of all arts! The […]

When I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying, This be thy portion, child; […]

I Thy trivial harp will never please Or fill my craving ear; Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, […]

Because I was content with these poor fields, Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams, And found a home in […]

The green grass is growing, The morning wind is in it, ‘Tis a tune worth the knowing, Though it change […]

Venus, when her son was lost, Cried him up and down the coast, In hamlets, palaces, and parks, And told […]

The prosperous and beautiful To me seem not to wear The yoke of conscience masterful, Which galls me everywhere. I […]

Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument, April 19th, 1836 By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their […]

I love thy music, mellow bell, I love thine iron chime, To life or death, to heaven or hell, Which […]

Trees in groves, Kine in droves, In ocean sport the scaly herds, Wedge-like cleave the air the birds, To northern […]

I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic […]

Virtue runs before the muse And defies her skill, She is rapt, and doth refuse To wait a painter’s will. […]

On being asked, Whence is the flower? In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, I found the fresh Rhodora in […]

Man was made of social earth, Child and brother from his birth; Tethered by a liquid cord Of blood through […]

Though loth to grieve The evil time’s sole patriot, I cannot leave My buried thought For the priest’s cant, Or […]

Why should I keep holiday, When other men have none? Why but because when these are gay, I sit and […]

The Sphynx is drowsy, Her wings are furled, Her ear is heavy, She broods on the world.? “Who’ll tell me […]

Himself it was who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That […]

“May be true what I had heard, Earth’s a howling wilderness Truculent with fraud and force,” Said I, strolling through […]

The sense of the world is short, Long and various the report,- To love and be beloved; Men and gods […]